A Survey of Ancient Peruvian Art. 377 



6. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF LATE INCA OR CUZCO ART. 



In Inca art we come to the last phase of aboriginal art in 

 Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. As the type from 

 which all variants of the Inca types were derived was peculiar 

 to Cuzco and its region, we will examine the art of that district 

 before tracing its spread over the wide area it eventually covered. 

 As we have noted before, the collection of pottery and other 

 artifacts made by the various Yale Peruvian Expeditions in the 

 Cuzco region is the most representative collection of Cuzco pot- 

 tery now in this country. The articles by Dr. Bingham show 

 excellently well the nature of the site in which most of these 

 things were found. ^^ Important also for our purposes, is the 

 recent publication by Dr. Eaton.^^ The evidence presented by 

 him proves conclusively that most of the burials at Machu 

 Picchu are relatively recent, probably dating not farther back 

 than sixty or eighty years before the Conquest. Since this is 

 so, we must assume that the artifacts from there are also recent. 

 None have been found that are pre-Inca. 



Besides the Yale collection, that in Berlin and that of Dr, 

 Caparo Muiiiz at Cuzco are the best two.^^ It will be well to 

 note that the late Inca period which we are now to discuss 

 includes the reigns of the last three unmolested Incas : Pachacutec, 

 Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac. The period began, prob- 

 ably, somewhat after 1400. When Inca Pachacutec assumed 

 the red fringe of sovereignty the Inca dominion already included 

 most of the territory between Chincha and Huanuco on the 

 north and Arica and Tucuman on the south. It was extended 

 by Pachacutec and his successors so as to include all the territory 

 between the northern part of the modern Ecuador and the River 

 Maule in Chile and between the ocean and the montaiia or forest- 

 region. In the last days just before the Spanish conquest, when 

 the ill-fated Atahualpa was Inca, Quito, Cajamarca, Cuzco and 

 the island of Titicaca were the chief centres of importance. 

 Cuzco still remained the capital.*^ 



'^Bingham, 1913, 1915, 1915b, 1916. 



^ Eaton, 1916. 



^' Seler, 1893. 



^'Cf. Means, 1917; Pedro Sancho, 1840. 



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